General EV Discussion

[jumpjam]

Might have been discussed upthread, but what is everyone's strategy when it comes to charging their EV?

For whatever it is worth, my workplace doesn't have EV chargers or many (or any) spots for EVs (i.e. near a power socket). (All of our parking spots are allocated, so we park wherever we are given and that's that)

I can see a few approaches:

• Charge at home, straight into your 240 V. Racks up costs on your electricity bill, but still cheaper than fuel.
• Charge at EV charging spots around the place, using Chargefox or PlugShare to locate spots.
• Charge at supercharging spots every so often, similar to the cycle of refuelling an ICE car.

Does anyone here aim for charging their vehicle free of charge (i.e. search for charging spots that don't cost anything for the charging)?

Finally, I think, like most batteries, would people ensure their batteries are nearly always between 20-90% only? Has anyone ever driven their EV down to lower than 10% or even 5%?

Most of the free chargers are very slow, except for NRMA chargers which haven't yet been converted to paid. I would use these first (noting they will all be paid soon), charge at home second, and if you own a Tesla use superchargers. They are better maintained than other chargers and fast.

 

[ayebee]

Good though unexpected result this morning in the High Court, with Victoria's ZLEV tax ruled unconstitutional.
Now looking forward to a $600+ refund of the taxes previously paid.

 

[UP4014]

Good though unexpected result this morning in the High Court, with Victoria's ZLEV tax ruled unconstitutional.
Now looking forward to a $600+ refund of the taxes previously paid.

Don't panic, there will be another tax coming. Every state looking at it.

 

[ayebee]

Don't panic, there will be another tax coming. Every state looking at it.

I am sure the states are looking for more taxes, but they now know they can't just tax EV kms.
eg. a more general road user / congestion charge ? That would be a politically courageous move with existing ICE owners.

 

[prozac]

Don't panic, there will be another tax coming. Every state looking at it.

I think the tax failed because it was being collected by the state government as an attempt to replace the federal fuel excise tax and so was unconstitutional. The only way to make plug in EV drivers pay a tax for road use, the same as all other road users, would be to levy it at the federal level.

 

[33kft]

Every state looking at it.

I think this is entirely missing the point. The tax was ruled unconstitutional because the constitution determines that the federal, and not the state governments alone can levy an excise, which is what the high court today found this to be.



The states can look at it until the cows come home but they'd be extremely brave to try to implement something that has just been confirmed unconstitutional.

The feds, on the other hand, backed this high court case and will no doubt come up with something.

Right now they're probably not in a position to pull it off.

 

[TheRealTMA]

Need to keep your water bath handy!

Car parking spaces will have to be bigger because of electric car fires

1960s-era fire safety laws could be inadequate to tackle risks from EV batteries, says report

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[elanshin]

In other EV news BYD seal pricing has been announced and seems to be at a decent point. 49990+ ORC before incentives for a "model 3" equivalent is enticing to say the least. Of course it remains to be seen how the seal really performs in real world.

 

[anat0l]

Need to keep your water bath handy!

Car parking spaces will have to be bigger because of electric car fires

1960s-era fire safety laws could be inadequate to tackle risks from EV batteries, says report

www.telegraph.co.uk

Great... bring on the first EV dire vandalism incidents...

...and the stories that EV battery manufacturers were being cowboys and cutting costs resulting in unstable batteries (at least in the long term).

Wider parking spots...that's rich. A bit like the proliferation of PEDs with better batteries ironically demanded an increase in available and public power sockets.

 

[33kft]

Need to keep your water bath handy!

Car parking spaces will have to be bigger because of electric car fires

1960s-era fire safety laws could be inadequate to tackle risks from EV batteries, says report

www.telegraph.co.uk

Hmm yeah the UK definitely wouldn't want EVs catching on fire in indoor carparks would they

Luton Airport fire cars 'unlikely to be salvageable'

Emergency services have now handed back control of the multi-storey car park to the airport.

www.bbc.com

Wonder what EV caused that?

Car park fire shuts down London airport

A diesel-powered SUV has been linked to a car park fire which shut down Luton Airport in London, causing damage to hundreds of vehicles.

www.drive.com.au

Ah...

 

[kookaburra75]

I think this is entirely missing the point. The tax was ruled unconstitutional because the constitution determines that the federal, and not the state governments alone can levy an excise, which is what the high court today found this to be.

View attachment 350694

The states can look at it until the cows come home but they'd be extremely brave to try to implement something that has just been confirmed unconstitutional.

The feds, on the other hand, backed this high court case and will no doubt come up with something.

Right now they're probably not in a position to pull it off.

It's really no different to when the High Court struck down an ACT Government levy per video tape on the cough industry, and the flow on effect was stopping other States from levying their own fuel taxes. That's when they brought in the Federal Road User Charge, part of which gets distributed to the States for road construction and maintenance. Now there are calls to have a single Federal Road User Charge including EVs, but the basis for the charging would be very messy, and difficult to collect, as the current system of so many cents per litre is simple. For EVs, would it be based on kms, as they are proposing for trucks?

 

[33kft]

Honestly I'm happy to just let some bureaucrat work it out. I'd probably care if there was any honesty at all to the claim that they are using the funds for road maintenance, but that is utter bs. It does and always has gone into general revenue and no attempt is made to reconcile or index it against road maintenance costs.

So when the claim is that it is of key importance to ensure every driver is finding their usage of the roads but it ends up going to funding sports grounds in marginal electorates, I well and truly lose interest in how the government will maintain their revenue stream.

It is a little irrelevant anyway, Pallas has already signalled he will just find a way to bake it into registration costs in VIC which quite frankly is how I think it should be done anyway - states cover road coats from rego and feds from tax reciepts. Sure it isn't a user pays system but neither was this given VIC was taxing for kms driven federally, and charging an average based on size/weight has to be way more cost effective than having to collect and verify odometer readings from every driver.

Not to mention that VIC "partially" privatised VicRoads road licensing services last year, so a fair whack of all of this revenue is just going into super funds pockets.

 

[ayebee]

reckon it is fair enough that every vehicle pays a user type charge, but my main gripe with the Vic tax structure was that PHEVs paid twice.
With a "pure" EV you know every km is done without paying fuel excise, but with hybrids there is a whole spectrum of use cases.
Pallas assumed 80% of kms done by PHEVs would be "EV", based on theoretical daily averages and manufacturer claims of distances their batteries would last. There was no consideration whether you lived in the inner city or in a country town, the particular model vehicle you had, or the condition of the batteries as they age.
In our case for the first year of the scheme we did just over 16,000 km, and purchased over 800 litres of fuel. Knowing the fuel efficiency when the battery was already exhausted we could work out we did 10,500 km on fuel, and 5,500 km on batteries, so paying 80% of the EV tax was not fair in our case. More like 30% would be break even, but then you wonder if the clunky bureaucracy involved was worth the effort for a vehicle type that is most likely transitional anyway. I understood that was the tack NSW was planning to take, ie to just ignore PHEVs.

The Victorian ombudsman had similar thoughts.

Investigation into the Department of Transport and Planning’s implementation of the zero and low emission vehicle charge | Victorian Ombudsman

Investigation into the Department of Transport and Planning’s implementation of the ZLEV charge

www.ombudsman.vic.gov.au

 

[Quickstatus]

For EVs, would it be based on kms, as they are proposing for trucks?

It will be difficult for the Feds to do a per km charge. The only reason the states can easily do it is because of vehicle registration.

 

[tgh]

What would be an equitable ev contribution nationally ?

 

[TheRealTMA]

Wonder if this will hapopen here?

Electric cars risk becoming uninsurable

Difficulty pricing battery repairs forcing insurers to refuse cover

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[cove]

I heard that the repair costs of EVs is running at about 25% higher than other vehicles.

 

[33kft]

I heard that the repair costs of EVs is running at about 25% higher than other vehicles.

What would that mean - accident repairs or maintenance repairs? Parts or Labour? If it's accident repairs, I assume that means in 90% of cases insurers are bearing the additional cost and likely passing it on through insurance premiums. If it's maintenance repair, how does that align? EVs have no gearboxes, no engines, there's no pistons or gaskets or valves or clutches or transmissions to replace. There's a hell of a lot less to repair, outside of bodywork and key parts like motors and batteries. Is this trying to suggest that EVs have major part failures regularly?

 

[Gremlin]

This is anecdotal only, but from what I’ve been told it is accident repair. Any damage whatsoever to the battery is likely to lead to a battery replacement. This can occur even with a relatively minor fender bender that might be ignored in an “equivalent” ICE car.

As an aside for EV drivers, it is well worth reporting an incident to your insurer, even if you think it is minor, in case the battery is impacted in any way.

 

[ayebee]

This is anecdotal only, but from what I’ve been told it is accident repair. Any damage whatsoever to the battery is likely to lead to a battery replacement. This can occur even with a relatively minor fender bender that might be ignored in an “equivalent” ICE car.

As an aside for EV drivers, it is well worth reporting an incident to your insurer, even if you think it is minor, in case the battery is impacted in any way.

interesting.
we had minor panel damage on our Outlander PHEV in January 2022, where the repair certainly made it worth paying our excess for repairs.
sadly the damage was self inflicted and did not involve any impacts where we even considered mechanical or battery damage.

as reported in post upthread we then in June this year had a battery failure, plus collateral damage, that was replaced under warranty where I estimated it would have been north of $12k otherwise. If outside normal warranty, I reckon it would have been difficult to convince an insurance company that the battery failure was linked to minor panel damage.